Malaysia joins Indonesia in suspending access to Musk’s Grok AI over sexually explicit content concerns

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has suspended access to Elon Musk’s Grok AI over concerns that the chatbot allowed the creation of sexually explicit images, including images of women and children.

AFP reported, citing a statement from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) on Sunday (Jan 11), that the regulator had “directed a temporary restriction on access to the Grok artificial intelligence for users in Malaysia” with immediate effect.

The move follows Indonesia, which was the first country to block all access to Grok on Saturday.

The Malaysian regulator said the decision came after repeated misuse of Grok to create “obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive, and non-consensual manipulated images,” despite prior regulatory engagement and formal notices to X Corp and xAI, the startup behind Grok.

It also noted that the platform’s safeguards were inadequate, criticising X Corp for failing to address the inherent risks posed by Grok’s design and operation.

Access to the site would resume only after the required changes are verified, the Malaysian regulator added.

An AFP reporter in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, who tried to use prompts with the AI tool, said it did not respond.

Grok, which is integrated into social media platform X, had earlier limited its image generation and editing features to paying subscribers after criticism of the AI tool’s generated sexually explicit content. European officials and tech campaigners had said this change did not solve concerns over sexualised deepfakes.

In a post on X on Jan 4, the xAI CEO quoted himself saying, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” /TISG

Read also: Telegram set to get US$300M and half of xAI revenue from from Grok chatbot deal, ‘pending formalities’